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this video shows activity in a pig's brain hours after the animal died it's the result of research by yell scientists that doesn't just suggest new medical methods for repairing brain injury but challenges long held notions of life and death the findings were published Wednesday in the scientific journal nature researchers obtained the heads of thirty two picks from a slaughterhouse removed the brains and pump them with a solution meant to mimic blood flow delivering nutrients and oxygen to brain cells they tested them six hours later with colored dice the image on the left shows a brain that did not receive the solution the image on the right shows one that did the green areas are neurons the red areas are brain cells called astrocytes this is a lead researcher Dr knitted system described the results on a conference call this is not a leading right , but it is a similarly Aktiv great the researchers stress that at no point to the brains show anything approaching large scale electrical activity or consciousness if they did they were prepared to pull the plug because that would have been an area outside the bounds of current scientific ethics we don't have ethics committees or animal ethics committees that are constituted to even think about is the suffering that confused by the research justified body and goals of the research there is no mechanism and there's no consensus about how to do that if consciousness were induced by the research research would have to stop researchers do not know whether the results could be replicated in the human brain and the authors of the study said the findings have no immediate medical applications but the researchers shines a light on ways to help salvage brain function after illness such as Alzheimer's or physical brain injury